Anti-Valentines: Mean Poems Out Of High-School

Poem I

I knew him, you see,
This certain young man,
And that is why
I saw him and ran.

In the plan of the ages
This tragedy is –
That I should be
An acquaintance of his.

Poem II

I never gave you a second look
Because one look was quite enough
For me to know that a look a day
Would be really, really tough.

I never hear you in my dreams
Because I plug my ears
Your voice at breakfast every day
Would kill me in two years

I never gave you a second look,
I never see you in my dreams
But I sense your presence always,
For I always smell you, it seems!

Poem III

She’s so sweet – (That I get sick)
She’s so honest – (that I know she likes me)
She’s pretty – (Make-up does the trick)
She’s the girl that really psyches me.
When she smiles, I feel the world shake
(Where do you hide when a girl’s on the make?)
I’m so glad she’s in my life,
(Now I know what I don’t want in a wife.)

Poem IV

Mister, I
(When I see you in school)
Give thanks to Heaven
for the “six-inch” rule!
Since at the moment
I see you too clearly,
I sign this note
“Very sincerely”.

Poem V

A is for Apple
B is for Bear
C is to tell you
That I don’t Care

S is for Sobbing
T is for Tear
U can cry all you want
Because I just won’t hear.

Poem VI

I like you; I mean it! You’re a very nice guy.
Let’s be friends. Thanks for everything. Goodbye.

Poem VII

“Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
Your hair is like french fries,
Your voice a kazoo.”

“Violets are purple
Roses are pink.
My dream guy wears Old Spice,
While you merely stink.”

Poem VIII

Handsome, with talents galore
He knows what he’s here for –
He thinks he was made to bring romance
To women’s lives with his every glance.
However, he never succeeds;
A fault or two is what he needs!

Poem IX

Dear young lady, just so you know,
I got over you, four or five years ago!
It’s been half a decade since I found you awesome,
So please go elsewhere and flap your jaw some!

Normally it just comes to me. In the case of these poems, I had a hard time as a teenager with boys being mean to me so I wanted to write something mean to make me feel better about it. It’s hard to write a poem about something just because someone tells you to.

However, I have done poems for school assignments, too. I think the best things to write about are the things that make you feel strongly. You don’t want to write about the feeling itself (that gets mushy and self-indulgent) but you do want to write about the thing that makes you feel. Is there something you wish you could say to someone but you don’t think they would understand? You could pretend to be talking to them and say it in poetry. Or maybe there’s a place you go sometimes that you really love and you want to talk about what makes it so cool. Maybe you remember an event you went to that was exciting, or when you knew your best friend was going to be your best friend or what your sibling is like. I even wrote a funny poem about my favorite food, which is strawberries. It’s at the bottom of this page: https://alanaroberts.wordpress.com/juvenalia/twenty-years-old/

Poetry is a more noble form of expression than regular talking, so the subject matter of a poem, in my opinion, needs to be somewhat elevated or at least something that would sound funny in elevated language – like the strawberries. We write poems about what we respect and value. I don’t think depression and disgusting things inspire good poetry. Some poems are stories, like my Holly Brightweed poems. Some poems describe characters, like Edwin Arlington Robsinson’s poems, or describe animals, like William Blake’s ‘The Tyger.’

If you read enough poetry you may start to think the way that poets think and an idea will come to you. I suggest going to http://www.poets.org/ and reading some poetry. Try Robert Frost, Walter De la Mare, Lewis Carol, Robert Luis Stevenson… they all wrote poetry that was simple and picturesque. Even Dr. Seuss! Good poetry has word-pictures in it, so looking at pictures can inspire you, too: a book of photographs from your library or just looking up pictures of mountains or temples or flowers or animals or places you know on Flickr.com or Google image search. Of course something you see with your own eyes is most inspiring.

A boy I knew in high school wrote a very entertaining humorous poem about a pencil so I guess just about anything could work as long as you notice what makes something unique.